Three tales

Having been an English major back in the days when that meant you were required to read until you wore out your eyes, I've read and mostly forgotten a ton, several tons, of literature. Too, we were bookworms when we were kids; learning we could take as many books out of the library as we wished was a wondrous discovery. My mother was always telling us to put down that book and go outside and get some fresh air. My father was constantly reminding us to turn out the lights and go to bed. "Do you want to make the electric company rich?" "You wouldn't stay up so late reading if you had to get up at 6:00 in the morning!" But of all the works of literature, I find that only three have a real effect on me now. I do remember Dorothy and me reading downstairs when everybody else was upstairs, and sometimes what we read scared us so much that we dreaded going into the dark hallway, near the foreboding front door, to climb the stairs to bed. Fagan was exceptionally scary when he appeared at the window of the girl he murdered. (The window!!) But what scared us is now mostly forgotten, as is whatever stories moved us to laughter or to tears. Now there are only 3 that are so moving I can't bear to read them anymore. "Our Town" had no effect at first; the play was mandatory reading in Mrs. Hack's 11th grade English class, and Dorothy was assigned to her class, where the play was studied and analyzed in depth. However, I was in the new English teacher Mr. Angelo's class that year, and we read some other work, maybe "Silas Marner." So not until several years later, when I was helping to direct the play at Cambridge High School did I get to know the play all the way through. A girl named Toni played the lead role in the best performance I'd ever seen, counting movies and Broadway versions. A boy name Lewis could have been Thornton Wilder's pure idea of Stage Manager. I can still see those two on stage, with the light shining on the girl's black hair as she yearned to relive the lost past, and the spotlight on the world weary retrospective of the youth who tried to help us make sense of life, and death. I couldn't make it through that performance now, any more than I can read Truman Capote's "Christmas Memory." The last time I read it, years ago, it reminded me so much of the last part of Helen's life interwoven with the last years of Danny's childhood that I became a tear sodden wreck, and that was before time played out its themes of death and growing up, and away. The third literary work forever stuck in my mind is a short story that was published some years ago in "The Atlantic" magazine. I have a vague idea of the title, but can't recall it. I know where I stashed it, to read again, but I've always been afraid to look for it. It was told from the point of view of an elderly woman destined to be murdered, the most chilling narrative I'd ever read. If I can find the nerve to look it up, I'll post the title, but I can't recommend it to anyone.